Hereafter

The truth

The morning sun rose over the ocean, streaking beautiful hues of pink and purple and orange across the sky. I sat in the sand with Tristan Parrish, his hand clutching mine, and stared down at his worn leather bracelet while I listened to the sound of his even breathing and the rhythm of the waves rolling onto shore. On any other day, this would have been the most romantic moment of my life. But this was today. And my life was over.

Focus, Rory. Focus and breathe.

“So that night on the highway…that wasn’t a nightmare,” I said slowly. “Me, my father, and my sister…we all died.”

Tristan’s clear blue eyes were shot through with pain. The callus on his thumb pressed into my palm. “Yes.”

I was numb as I spoke the next few words. “Steven Nell killed us.”

“Yes.”

His grip on my fingers tightened, and suddenly a sucking void opened up inside my chest. I gasped, clinging to him as a barrage of images assaulted me one after another, like a film projected on a screen. Mr. Nell charging me, his watery eyes wild with hunger. The knife blade buried deep in my stomach. The bloodstain seeping through my shirt. The tree branches gnashing overhead. My last, choked breaths as I slowly slipped away and everything grew cold.

My heart twisted painfully and I bent forward, struggling to breathe.

“I’m so sorry,” Tristan said again. “I had to show you the truth.”

He squeezed my hand once more, and his gorgeous, chiseled face zipped into focus. If this had been any other day, I would have been obsessing about what he was thinking. Why he was still holding my hand. Whether it meant he liked me as much as I liked him. I’d be worrying over whether my palms were clammy, if I had morning breath, or if my hair was doing that insane frizz thing around my forehead it so loved to do. These were the things a sixteen-year-old girl was supposed to be obsessing about. I was not supposed to be obsessing about how I’d died.

Overhead, a fat crow cawed, swooping in and out before settling atop the roof of the white-and-blue beachfront house my family had been living—no, not living…existing—in since we arrived in Juniper Landing exactly one week ago. We’d been forced to flee our home in Princeton, New Jersey, when my math teacher, a serial killer who’d already killed fourteen other girls, had set his sights on me.

We’d followed the FBI agent’s directions to a T, driving through a torrential downpour to our new location, our new identities as the Thayer family in tow. We thought we’d made it safely down to South Carolina, but we hadn’t made it at all. Mr. Nell had found us on a lonely stretch of highway and finished what he’d set out to do. He killed my dad, then my sister, Darcy, then me.

Suddenly, I shoved myself up, spraying sand everywhere in my haste.

“Where are you going?” Tristan scrambled to his feet and reached for me, but I flung his hand away, shaking from head to toe.

“I have to tell my sister. I have to tell my dad,” I said, my voice thick with tears.

“No. You can’t,” he said vehemently. “You can’t do that.”

Tristan got in front of me and blocked my way. Behind him I could see the windows of my father’s room. The room where he slept, oblivious to the fact that his life had ended. That his attempt to protect his daughters by leaving the house we’d grown up in, the house where my mother had lived and died, had failed.

“What? What do you mean, I can’t?” I shouted. “They’re my family, Tristan.”

I tried to step around him, but he grabbed my arm, his grip so tight it sent a shock of alarm through me. I tried to wrench myself away, but suddenly a soft, soothing sensation sprang up inside my wrist and slowly traveled up my arm and into my chest. He clung to me, and my heart stopped slamming against my rib cage. My breathing returned to normal. I felt suddenly, oddly, calm.

I looked into Tristan’s pale blue eyes. They were…victorious.

A thump of fear obliterated any sense of serenity. I yanked my arm out of his grasp, his fingernails scraping my skin.

“What was that? What did you just do to me?” I demanded, backing away in terror.

His face paled. “Rory—”

“No!” I shouted, betrayal clenching my gut. “You can’t just mess with my mind like that! What are you?”

Tristan’s face turned to stone, and his eyes flicked just past my shoulder. I felt the presence of someone behind me two seconds before I collided with something solid and unyielding. A pair of strong arms closed around me, locking my limbs against my chest and picking me up off the ground, all while Tristan looked on calmly.

I screamed as loudly as I could. The only response was a seagull’s cry.

“This hurts me more than it hurts you,” a low voice whispered in my ear.

My chest constricted, tighter and tighter, until I couldn’t breathe and the world around me went gray. Tristan stepped forward slowly, looking into my eyes, his mouth set in a grim line.

“Why?” I gasped, trying to cling to consciousness. “Why are you doing this to me?”

“I’ll explain everything when you wake up,” he said gently. “I promise.”

Then his handsome face contorted and blurred, and everything went black.